Big Mother Is Watching You: Mistresses of the Universe

Cindy McCain speaking at an event hosted by The McCain Institute in Phoenix, Arizona on November 22, 2013. (Photo by Flickr user gageskidmore)

Welcome to Big Mother Is Watching You, a guide to prominent anti-sex worker activists, most of them women. This new feature is brought to you by Robin D., veteran activist with SWOP-Denver. Today’s Mothers are a pair of powerful heiresses and philanthropists who, of late, have focused their efforts on influencing policy affecting sex workers.

Sports-event-related trafficking hysteria harms sex workers in a few ways. Unfortunately, law enforcement have started using these occasions as opportunities for ramped up stings and other arrests. Sex workers often expect that large sports events might bring increased business, only to find that not only is this not the case, but they’re at higher risk for arrest during these events. The harmful effects of “End Demand”-style legislation are well-documented, especially in the US, where no attempts are ever made by proponents to remove penalties against sex workers, and where penalty increases often target actions that sex workers take to stay safe, as well as prostitution itself.

McCain also served as co-chair of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s Task Force on Human Trafficking. Brewer is well known for her contributions to Arizona’s appalling carceral system, one of the most brutal in the US. Arizona’s prisons and jails are known for their general hostility to immigrants, people of color, LGBT (especially transgender) people, and people living in poverty, including sex workers like Monica Jones and Marcia Powell. When Powell was sentenced to prison for prostitution in 2008, Brewer was Arizona Secretary of State and McCain was wrapped up in her husband’s second Presidential campaign. When Powell was left in a cage outdoors to die in the Arizona heat in the summer of 2009, Brewer was newly appointed to succeed Janet Napolitano as Governor of Arizona. This sort of brutality is routine in the Arizona correctional system which McCain thinks is equipped to help victims.

Like many sex workers, Cindy McCain has struggled with opioid addiction, though due to the influence of her powerful family, she was able to escape any legal consequences for years, despite taking upwards of twenty pills a day at one point, having employed a physician to write illegal prescriptions in her employees’ names. Cindy McCain was later charged in connection with these activities, but due to her wealth and political power she received only community service and a diversion program in lieu of jail. She was never at risk of the sort of fate that Marcia Powell, who was a drug user as well as a sex worker, endured.

In May 2010, Demand Abolition held a national planning meeting in Cambridge, MA. A report of the meeting is publicly available. Many of the the names I’ll be bringing up in this column are authors of this report or are thanked in the acknowledgements. The report states outright that, “No distinctions need be made between purchasing sex from persons compelled to provide it, and buying sex from persons without force, fraud, or coercion by a third party” (1-6).

Swanee Hunt was ambassador of the US to Austria in a sinecure position she held from 1993 to 1997. (Photo via Voice of America)

It endorses the following tactics: street and web-based reverse stings (in which law enforcement officers pose as sex workers); “awareness campaigns”; the shaming of sex work clients; “Dear John” letters to the families of people caught buying sex; vehicle seizure; geographic restraining (“SOAP”/ “Save Our Adolescents From Prostitution”) orders that prevent people caught buying sex from entering areas “known for prostitution,” “neighborhood action” including tips to police; citizen patrols; “community impact panels” which argue that prostitution negatively affects the community; john schools; and increased criminal penalties for sex workers and their clients. The report also contains material persuading men not to buy sex by frightening them with the possibilities of arrest and exposure and by characterizing sex workers as disease-ridden and potentially violent.

Demand Abolition’s report also details how they might employ unused funds or additional money raised to support more law enforcement efforts and anti-trafficking NGOs, and to conduct further research into preventing the purchase of sexual services.

They see all these efforts as being underfunded, but then multi-billionaires have odd ideas about money. The Hunt Alternatives Fund took in $12,976,136 in 2012.

There’s something especially noxious about the wealthy pretending to know what’s best for sex workers. These are women benefiting from the most enormous privilege imaginable. Anti-sex work feminists sometimes like to say that any sex worker who speaks out is “too privileged to be representative”—but that’s not a lens that they turn on themselves or their fellow anti-sex work activists.

Our next edition of Big Mother Is Watching You will tackle anti-sex work figures who are current and former members of US government.

Robin D has been involved with SWOP since 2008 and Prax(us) (now closed) since 2011. She's a big believer in "meatspace" collective activism, building community/community organizing, and coalition-building. She obsessively shares articles about sex workers' rights and other social justice issues, and can spend an embarrassing amount of time on the internet, which is both magical and poisonous.

10 COMMENTS

We need to run a boycott on Anheuser-Busch just like Harvey got the LGBT community to run on Coors Beer to expose how they are using their rich bitch to oppress us and make them stop. With all the social media and some GOOD organizing, it would be a piece of cake.

Re: Boycott
Taken from Wikipedia, here is a list of their brands:
“Anheuser-Busch Companies is responsible for the production, importation and distribution of several AB InBev products, including three company-designated global brands, Budweiser, Stella Artois, and Beck’s. Other multi-country brands distributed or produced by Anheuser-Busch Companies include Leffe and Hoegaarden, while local brands produced by the company include Bass Pale Ale, Bud Light, Busch Beer, Landshark Lager, Michelob, Natural Light, and Shock Top. The company also produces nonalcoholic beverages, malt liquors (such as King Cobra and Hurricane), and flavored malt beverages (e.g. the Bacardi Silver family and Tequiza)”

I was about to respond “It’s Miller Time!” but looks like Miller and Coors consolidated to better compete against Anheuser-Busch, forming MillerCoors, which is headed by Pete Coors. Yuengling seems like the next best choice but unfortunately their current CEO, Richard L. Yuengling is rabidly anti Union and apparently trying to dodge state taxes. Looks like home brews and locally vetted micro-breweries for us!

I am in on the boycott of A-B products. These self-righteous doyennes feel so entitled they cannot conceive of women who think differently or live in vastly different circumstances. They and the law need to desist from judging and seeking to regulate the sexual actions of others whether these entail monetary exchange or not.

[…] The description of the documentary also parrots the widely-discredited statistic that 300,000 underage girls are trafficked in the U.S. every year (for reference, this mean that about 1% of underage girls in the U.S. are trafficked every year—are 10% trafficked every decade? Were 1 in 10 of the girls you know trafficked in the past decade? 3 in 10 in the last 30 years?). She is working on a similar CNN documentary about Atlanta clubs, stating that “strip clubs are breeding grounds for sex trafficking.” Atlanta, notably, is a city whose John School and Dear John social marketing campaign were cited as a success by Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition. […]

[…] the legal stripping age from 18 to 21, immediately putting thousands of young women out of work. Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition boasts, “For the two years that the ordinance was in effect, 2,400 girls […]

We have to run a blacklist on Anheuser-Busch simply like Harvey got the LGBT people group to keep running on Coors Beer to uncover how they are utilizing their rich bitch to mistreat us and make them stop. With all the online networking and some GOOD sorting out, it would be easy

We need to run a boycott on Anheuser-Busch basically like Harvey got the LGBT social order to continue running on Coors Lager to reveal how they are using their rich bitch to abuse us and influence them to stop. With all the web-based systems administration and some Great dealing with, it would be simple